THE BUGS

NEW! The ready item bug:

When you are in the dungeon ready a potion in your ready item window, then go up to the town and sell that potion to the witch.  After you have sold it it will not be in your inventory but you will still have it in your ready item window and you will still be able to use it via the window.  So if you are REALLY cheap you could get out of loseing another potion this way :)
Thanks to Rich Rouse for pointing this one out.

The ever present money bug:

When you have finished beating the butcher into a pile of bloody gibs, or you have just sold the motherload of items to the blacksmith if you press escape and start a new game your new character will have all the cash the one you just lost had on him. you will not see this money in your inventory but you will have it when you go to buy or sell items in either of the stores.  Do this a few times and you will have a new character with the ability to buy the super items you are dieing to play with!

The Spell Bug:

never take off all your weapons and then try to cast magic, it will distort the graphics for all the spells and if you try to cast a Lightning or Flash spell it will crash the game.  Always have somthing on when you cast!  Of course if you are really desperate you can still cast non lightning spells they will just look strange.

The magic weapon bug:

It is possible to find magic weapons in the game, if you put one on and then weild a staff that you can only weild because of the plus the weapon gave you the game will lock up.  Let me explain with an example:

You have a 20 magic ability, you have a staff of lightning that requires a 25 magic ability to weild.  you put on a sword or buckler that gives you the +5 magic you need.  You can now weild the staff.  However when you exchange the staff for the sword you can no longer use the staff because your magic goes back to 20, but you are still weilding the staff.  The game simply cannot handle this and crashes either right when you put it on, the first time you attack with the staff or the first time you try to use the staffs special ability.  

If you have an item giving you magical pluses it will not effect items in the store.  EXAMPLE:
you have a 15 magic, you are wearing a ring giving you a +5 magic.  In the witches shop there is a book that requires a 17 magic, this book will still be red (red means you can't use it) even though you CAN use it because of the pluses you have.  So check your stats befor skipping somthing cause it's red!

These weapons are however great for using books.  you slap on your sword of +5 magic (which you are not weilding because you have a better sword) learn a spell from a book you could not otherwise use and then take off the sword. ;)

Same goes for bucklers and shields of magic.

The super cool file bug:

Ok, this little baby is my pride and joy, I came up with it myself so no one else better take the credit for it!   If you do this correctly it will allow you to play the same dungeon over with the same character effectivly allowing you to break the level 5 barrior.  you will be able to play the dungeon as many times as you want with the same guy, I managed to get ALL the book spells and have my character reach level 8 befor my dungeon got old.  this makes the demo way more interesting cause you can do some of the high level things that normaly you would not be able to reach, ok enough talk, heres how you do it:

When you start a new character go to the church, make sure that you talk to the wounded townsman outside, then go down into the dungeon.   As soon as you set foot in the dungeon come back up to the town.  As soon as you step out of the dungeon save it.  Now go quit the game.  Go into windows explorer, and into the c:\Diablo\temp\   directory delete the three save files you find there level1.sav, level0.sav and game00.sav.  Now go into the c:\Diablo\temp\save\ directory and make a new dir called back.  Now copy the file level1.sav into this back dir.  After you have finished doing whatever you want to on the level (you can even kill the butcher) go back out of the church and save.  Then go to the c:\Diablo\temp\save\ dir and delete the level0.sav and level1.sav NOT the game00.sav.  Now copy the level1.sav from the c:\Diablo\temp\save\back\  into c:\Diablo\temp\save\  then go reload your character, your dungeon will be reset with all the monsters and items replaced! 

NOTE: You will of course replace c:\diablo\ with whatever dir you installed Diablo to

NOTE: while I realize this is not really a bug, just a matter of file storage I still think the belongs in this section =D

THE TIPS

The NPCs (Non Player Characters):

Now that you know the bugs and how to use em lets move on to some game tips, first off lets talk about the NPCs.  Gimpy is the peg legged boy who appears randomly accross the river to the west (left) and is the only real NPC in the beta.  There is a chance he will be there every time you start a new game or exit the dungeon so keep checking and you will find him.  Gimpy has items to sell you that you can get a look at if you pay him 50gp. Gimpy will have one item each time he appears, this item can either be junk or (more likely) one of the most powerfull items in the demo.  Unless you use the money bug you will not have a prayer when trying to purchace from Gimpy, his items are priced fairly high (150% of the shops).  Gimpy has items of power that the shops don't carry, however, he tends to charge in the tens of thousands of dollars for his tresures (once he offered me a battle bow of gore +238% damage for only 22k).  So keep looking and remember, his name is Gimpy!

Buying/selling:

The shops change each time you venture into the dungeon or start a new game so don't leave the town expecting to save up and buy that Blade of Death for mom, it will not be there when you come back draggin a cartload of cash.  When you leave the dungeon make sure to make off with as much as you can crarry and make sure to identify all of it because you can't cast spells in the town!  Haul the most expensive items with you to the town, items of resist fire/lightning sell a lot.  Both shops will buy for half the price they sell for so consider what you would pay for an item when sizeing up it's worth.  And remember, magical items bring in the same cash as non-magical if you don't identify them!

Ye Olde Smithy: "What can I do for ya?"

This is where you sell all weapons (except staffs), armor, shields, helms and rings.  Do not bother repairing items before you sell them as it makes no differance in the price (at least not in the beta).   When purchaseing items look for the blue and red ones, blue means that item is magical and red means you can not yet weild it.  Don't skip over somthing just because you can't weild it yet, that YET is there for a reason, if you skip an item of power just because it is red you may be loseing somthing usefull that you are 1 skill point away from weilding.   And don't forget that you can't sell something you are wearing!  You would not belive it but I get e-mails from people claiming asking how to sell cloaks they are weraing! :)

Ye Olde.... um Witches Shop: "What do you seek?"

A very nice old lady (the years have been very kind).  This is where you sell all your staffs, books, potions and scrolls.  The witch is just off to the east (right) side of the town.  Bring her books for sell, a book that you can't use or don't want will bring in 500 in gold (for a low level spell like identify) and, pound for pound that beats the crap out of most magical weapons!  If you have a staff that you like but want to sell, go ahead and burn off all the charges before selling it, you will get the same price for it charges or no charges.

The Dungeon: "The smell of death surrounds me"

Fighting:

When fighting monsters one of the best tactics is to find yourself a good archway or a door to fight in, this keeps the monster from attacking you all at once and hitting so much you don't get an attack (that sucks).  Also be carful what you use your spells on, some monsters are immune to some forms of attacks.  One of the skeleton special characters (Boneripper) is totaly immune to fire and all undead (ghouls, zombies, skeletons) are immune to the Flash spell.  I like a good AX as it has a better chance to take down a foe in a single blow than a sword does and I think that makes up for both the speed and the inability to wear a shield.  As for taking out the Butcher, the BEST way to do this is to get the Flash spell (just fire it as he is approaching), but if you can't manage that try some slippery fighting.  Open the door to his room then walk away to where you can see the door, when he comes out try to hit him with fireball as many times as possible as he is approaching.  Get your weapon and wait for him to walk up to you, take one or two swings at him then move, if you try to go blow for blow with him you will lose (unless you are really tough and if so why do you need advice?).  When you move make sure you walk away from him, if you try to walk at an angel or along side him he will hit you and yank you back into the square you are trying to leave (this leads to quick death).   Other than that good luck.

Spell tricks: "Thoooooom"

Always try to fire your fireballs in straight lines, don't shoot for guys at strange angels and the same goes for lightning blot.  Be carful when casting Wall of Fire it is not all that difficult to land it on yourself and touching those flames spells instant death.  It is possible to set off Wall of Fire through a grate, so if you see a wad of monsters on the other side toast it off against the grate then walk up to it :) Flash has a very fast effect and kills everything around you so use it when surrounded and getting hit alot.  Flash will also kill the Butcher in a single hit so fire it off just as he is walking up to you.

Another cool trick of the beta is to get the Blood Ritual spell and a high level healing spell, EXAMPLE: cast BloodRitual level1 spending 10 life to gain 10 mana then cast healing level 3 spending 5 mana to gain 10 life do this a few times and you have full life and full mana!  

Dungeon Items:

Shrines,
If you encounter a shrine in the game (a black thing on the wall with a cross on it) save your game and touch it.  The shrines do effects such as raising your experience, stealing items, removing spells from your memory, teleporting you, taking away statistics... or worse.  But they can do good things so it is worth it.   They do not have random effects, meaning that a Mystic shrine will always do this and an Imposing shrine will always do that.  Try to connect names with effects, I want to know what each shrine does.  EXAMPLE: an "Imposing Shrine" will swap your statistics around.  If you connect a name with an effect please mail me and I will add it to the list which will be added to this page.

Bloodfountian,
The Bloodfoutian is an item that the dungeon RARELY generates, it is a large pool with a stone gargoyle on it filled with, you guessed it, blood.  When you touch it it will take away mana and give you life, much the way a healing spell will.  Not very usefull unless you are all out of potions, scrolls and without the healing spell yourself.

Sarcophagus,
These are the coffin like boxes that litter every dungeon.  When opening sarcophagus figure that almost all of these are trapped, so touch it then step away the arrows can be doged, this is also a good idea when opening chests.   The thing most commonly found in a sarcophagus is a Skeleton or Skeleton Captin,  you can however find thing such as potions, scrolls, weapons, and if you are really lucky a book.

Chests,
These come it three sizes, small chest, large chest, and chest.  They can be trapped but not as often as the sarcophagus but it is still a good idea to be cautious.  The chests can drop you anything from rags to staffs, and item can be found in a chest so open them all! (duh).

Bookcases,
These are found in libraries and will always yeild a book.  The books are random and other than that there is not much to say about em.

Skeleton Tombs,
These are found surrounding the Bookcases in the libraries, they almost always give up a single scroll but they can somtimes give a single book.  These never yeild more than one item.

Doors,
When opening doors and trying to avoid arrows click twice on the door very quickly to open it then slam it shut, if an arrow comes from the other side it will stop on the closed door.  Of course that does not help much with arrows coming from behind you :).  You can see doors on the automap as bright yellow squares, this can be very helpfull when looking for a door out of a room and having it end up in a dark corner where you passed it.

Items of Power,
This is what you would call the Butchers cleaver, items with brown text and special abilities.  It is very rare but you can find items of power like the Butchers cleaver on other special creatures.  Bonhead Keenax once droped me "The Needler", a special bow (you could tell because the lettering was brown and it had a name) it did "unusual item damage" 1-2, unusaly low :) and gave me +70% to hit! making my total 135% to hit! BTW you can still miss with 135% to hit. Just not very often =D

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